Seeing my translation - thus - when I did it I was thinking that thus meant

"In this way" - like "thus saith   Zarathustra" - but then I am a trifle old fashioned

Kveðja

Patricia

When the word order confuses me as it does; I put it down to an

Ideosyncracy of the language (now there's a thing - and watch for it next time

 

 

 

Hi all,

> en hann kveðst eigi ríða mundu
> "og svo vildi eg að þú gerðir."

I asked Eysteinn about this and he says he reads it exactly as MM & HP
understood it, and doesn't see any ambiguity.

Eysteinn: Svá = thus, in this way, in the same way. ... "Svá" does
not mean "therefore" - are you confusing it with "því"? I can not get
this meaning from the syntax. ... No, I don't think it is ambiguous,
because "svá" can't mean "therefore". I think you're reading something
into "svá" that isn't there. In English, perhaps," thus" can equal
"therefore", but not in Icelandic - at least I don't think so, and
can't thing of examples where it would do so.

I wonder if it might also be the word order that seems confusing to us
from an English point of view: ok svá vilda ek at þú gerðir "I would
that you do so", with 'svá' brought forward into the main clause.
Compare the common formula:

Ok svá gerðu þeir.
Gerðu þeir svá.

I also asked about "Um vorið spurði jarl Gunnar hvað hann vildi láta
ráða sinna."

Eysteinn: I have a problem with this, because "láta" is not in my
text, which goes " hvat hann vildi ráða sinna" (not mentioning any
variants). I'm not familiar with the expression "láta e-t ráða sinna".
"Hvat hann vildi ráða sinna" simply means "what he wanted in reference
to his plans", or more literally "what of his plans he wanted". I'm
not sure where this "láta" comes from, but it can hardly be the
preferred text.

So, no shame in us being baffled by that one ;-) 'ráða sinna',
gen.pl. is dependent of 'hvat'.

LN